OTTAWA - Human Resources Minister Diane Finley will face stepped-up pressure at a meeting today with her provincial counterparts to ditch a Conservative plan that relies on businesses and community groups to create new child-care spaces across the country.

Mary Anne Chambers, Ontario's minister of children and youth services, says there is a growing consensus the federal plan to provide $250 million a year in tax incentives and grants to companies and groups that open new spaces is a dud, largely because it offers no money to cover operating costs.

"You can open spaces, but if you can't help to support these spaces on an on-going basis, they won't happen,'' Chambers said in an interview.

Linda Reid, minister of state for child care in British Columbia, says the Tory plan, aimed at creating 25,000 spaces a year, is a huge question mark.

"Is it a free-for-all?'' Reid said. "Is it proposal-driven? Is it going to be first come, first serve?''

Reid said she knows of no business or community organization prepared to buy into the plan. "No community group has said, 'Give us the opportunity to build it, and we'll figure out how to fund it,''' Reid said. "None has welcomed that scenario. No business has either.''

Chambers says she will tell Finley it makes more sense to put the money directly into the hands of provinces and territories, which, she says, are struggling to meet demands for more child care with a lot less money than they had been promised by the former Liberal government.

Several ministers voiced support for Ontario's approach, and said they are optimistic the federal government will be flexible. They also said they see today's meeting as merely the opening phase of months of negotiation.

The other part of the Conservatives' child-care policy is a taxable $1,200 annual allowance for all children under the age of six. The government hopes to mail out the first cheques in July.

To pay for the allowance, the government says it will cancel next March the former Liberal government's plans to pump $5 billion over five years into a national child-care program. The move leaves the provinces and territories with $3.8 billion less than they had expected.

Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba, the only three provinces to sign five-year agreements with the Liberal government, have led demands that Stephen Harper's Tory government honour the deals.

Some provincial ministers said they are heartened by the government's recent admission that tax credits alone would not work because non-profit community groups do not pay taxes. It added grants to the menu of options in last month's budget.

"We have heard a little bit of a change in the language, and we're hoping that there may be an opportunity for other changes to take place,'' said Deb Higgins, minister of learning in Saskatchewan.

Higgins said Saskatchewan also would prefer a direct money transfer to the province so it could build on the child-care programs and plans that already exist. "We don't have a lot of large businesses that will take on child care,'' Higgins said.

Madeleine Dube, minister of family and community services in New Brunswick, said that province supports the Harper government's plan. Dube acknowledged, however, the formula for creating child-care spaces might not work in the largely rural province.

"That's why we are looking for the flexibility to make things happen,'' Dube said.

In a letter to Chambers in advance of today's meeting, Finley struck what Ontario officials interpreted as a conciliatory note. While she reiterated the government's plans, she also said the federal government wants to ensure its actions complement what Ontario is doing.

Higgins said she has abandoned hope the Harper government will restore the Liberal program. But she said the provinces and territories cannot settle for the Tory approach to child care.

Reid agreed. "We're into a long-term conversation into how we build sustainable child-care space in Canada,'' she said. "And if it's that you give business a tax receipt, and they build a space that lasts a year, that's not what we're interested in."